Moorhead adds Fordham head coach Breiner to staff
New Mississippi State head football coach Joe Moorhead is turning to an old friend as he continues to put together his staff with the Bulldogs.
Sources confirmed to the Starkville Daily News on Tuesday that Fordham head coach Andrew Breiner will become MSU's new quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. The news was first reported by The Athletic.
Breiner and Moorhead have a lengthy history together. Breiner was a graduate assistant at UConn when Moorhead was an assistant coach from 2009 through 2011.
Then, Breiner served as Moorhead's offensive coordinator when Moorhead was the head coach at Fordham from 2012 to 2015.
The paths of Breiner and Moorhead were separated when Moorhead left Fordham to become the offensive coordinator at Penn State. Breiner was promoted as Moorhead's replacement at Fordham.
Now, the two minds are reunited in Starkville.
Breiner found success in his two-year stint at Fordham. The Rams were just 4-7 this season, but were 8-3 in 2016.
During that 2016 season, Breiner's Fordham team led the Patriot League and ranked fourth in the NCAA FCS as the Rams averaged 498.2 yards per game. Fordham also ranked fourth in the nation in scoring in 2016 with an average of 40.1 points per contest.
"I want to thank Dave Roach for giving me the opportunity to be the head football coach at Fordham," Breiner said in a statement on the Fordham website. "It was an honor to lead such a prestigious program and I will forever be grateful to the administrators, coaching staff and the student-athletes for making it such a memorable experience."
Breiner is the second key piece to MSU's offense that Moorhead has added since his hire last week. Charles Huff joined the Bulldogs last week as running game coordinator, as well as assistant head coach and running backs coach.
Though both Breiner and Huff will serve as passing game coordinator and running game coordinator respectively, Moorhead stated last week that he will call MSU's offensive plays.
The addition of Breiner is likely to end the MSU tenure of current quarterbacks coach Brett Elliott. Elliott will remain a coach with the Bulldogs through the upcoming TaxSlayer Bowl, but sources told the SDN Tuesday that Elliott isn't expected to return to Mississippi State on Moorhead's staff.
Sources also told the SDN Tuesday that Andrew Warsaw is expected to join Moorhead's staff as director of football operations. Warsaw has spent time in the NFL as director of game operations and has also had stints at Purdue, Arizona, Fordham, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Penn and Villanova.